Hey everyone,
I’m bringing my blog back.. prepare yourself for spelling mistakes, rambling and so forth… I’ve set a little unofficial challenge to myself to do a workshop or something creative (besides my normal daily art grind). This months was an oil pastel workshop with Declan O Meara. Those of you that follow me on social media will have seen my instastories or FB post and spoiler alert.. I enjoyed this day. I will link Declan’s page at the end. Definitely check him out and try the workshop.
After we were taught the tools of the trade and the basics of setting up your portrait we picked out our piece… I don’t think the lady I picked was a celeb.. if she is I don’t know her but she had beautiful lighting and I love drawing women. I soon regretted the curly hair though!
We had to pick out all the areas of shadow and different blocks of colours. It is a great way of breaking down a portrait! You end up with this cool almost paint by numbers piece. Though… believe me… it is no paint by numbers.. at least that gives you the actual colours you must use haha. Then its time to build up the colourful under layer. Can you see any colours in her portrait?Yellows? Greys? Purples? An amazing challenge that Declan will talk you through. I actually had equal fear and excitement in doing this. Also a surprising inability to stay within the lines… apologies Declan!
I’m not going to go into detail on all we did in the workshop, firstly there was too much to share and then it would ruin the joy of participating in the class. It ran from 12-5 and covered the tools, setting up your piece, picking out colour zones, blending and much more. You can check out Declan’s courses on declanomearaart.com Let me know if you take part! It is for all abilities, I had an extra advantage with my art background but there were people who had never picked up a pencil, all abilities enjoying a creative Sunday afternoon! Now what can I do next? Let me know if you see any workshops I might enjoy!
